Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 191 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: ""How does the tune go?" a mountaineer was asked about a song. "It's sad-like", was his reply. . . . Who that has looked at the night stars from under a weeping willow tree, can fail to find here its saturated mournfulness, almost murmuring, "Pity me, weep with me over what I had that’s gone." The branches droop with a moist melancholy as though knowing a blessedness of tears. . . . Variants of this are heard in all states. ... It is old.
"It is from Jake Zeitlin, the text rounded out by verses from R. W. Gordon."
According to Mark Zwonitzer (with Charles Hirschberg), Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music, Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 99, this was the very first song the Carter Family played for Ralph Peer at the "Bristol Sessions" in 1927. So this song has a very big place in the history of old time country.
Day 191 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: ""How does the tune go?" a mountaineer was asked about a song. "It's sad-like", was his reply. . . . Who that has looked at the night stars from under a weeping willow tree, can fail to find here its saturated mournfulness, almost murmuring, "Pity me, weep with me over what I had that’s gone." The branches droop with a moist melancholy as though knowing a blessedness of tears. . . . Variants of this are heard in all states. ... It is old.
"It is from Jake Zeitlin, the text rounded out by verses from R. W. Gordon."
According to Mark Zwonitzer (with Charles Hirschberg), Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music, Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 99, this was the very first song the Carter Family played for Ralph Peer at the "Bristol Sessions" in 1927. So this song has a very big place in the history of old time country.
